parallel tracks

as the short break between winter semester and  spring term continues, i have pushed myself to read more and more. right now i'm still reading C.S Lewis' Mere Christianity which has been quite the adventure.  it's somewhat strange reading a book on theology written by a non-LDS author (although his books have practically been quoted enough in general conference to be added to canonized scripture).  today i read a paragraph that was very interesting, and although i've heard it quoted before by LDS authorities i would like to quote it here again because it makes a great point as to what living the gospel is really all about. 

     "Christ says, 'Give me all.  i don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much or your work: I want you.  I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it.  no half-measures are any good.  i don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, i want to have the whole tree down.  i don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked- the whole outfit.  i will give you a new self instead. in fact i will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.'"

C.S. Lewis, although he belonged to the church of england, was a pretty smart guy.  and though he didn't have the fullness of the gospel, he understood it very well.  reading this book has been great and i highly recommend it to anyone.  only one disclaimer to those who might venture the effort.  make sure that you understand the LDS gospel well before because his book will make more sense and there are parts of his book that, although good analogies or interesting doctrines, run parallel to the true revealed gospel.  i use the word "parallel" because it is close to the truth and it's going in the right direction but slightly off, like train tracks running close to each other are not the same, but lead ultimately to the same destination.  try it for yourself, i recommend it.

a day with C.S. Lewis

today is the first day in months that really, i've had nothing to do.  no papers, no assignments, no reading or physiology labs to make up....nothing!  in celebration of this awesome yet somewhat awkward day, i've decided to dedicate it to reading the books that i've wanted to read for sometime now but hadn't gotten the chance to.  today's book is Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.  the goal is to finish it before tuesday class gives me a headache with organic chemistry. 

did we skip spring?

yesterday, Bryce and I drove up to Salt Lake City to buy our season tickets and watch the Bee's play baseball (the great american sport) only to be disappointed with rain.  the weather report gave us a 30% chance of rainfall, but soon after driving up, not only was it raining, but it was pouring cats an dogs.  we were still able to buy the season tickets, but the game was rescheduled for the next day (today).   to my wonderful surprise it continued to rain through the night, into the next morning and then wonderfully it began to snow.  it's now mid april and it's not only snowing, but it's really coming down hard.  i think i remember there being a scripture in Isaiah that says something about the weather in the last days would be so weird that you would only be able to tell the seasons by the leaves on the trees.  perhaps i'm mistaken about the scripture, or perhaps someone more knowledgeable than i can correct me or give me the reference, but one thing that i'm not mistaken about is that the weather sucks, baseball has been delayed, golf season hasn't started yet and summer term is about to start despite the snow falling all around. where is spring?

dating: the new extreme sport

Today i walked home from Cori Hoffman from crown 4.  we talked about why dating at BYU is an extreme sport.  people, after going on a first date with a girl or boy (although more girls tend to do this than boys) start praying about whether "it" is right.  why cant people just date in a really relaxed way? have all the mormons lost their minds?  just get to know each other, settle down, and quit worrying if this person is "the one." some people have a very mistaken view as to whether we have "soul mates"  (or from an LDS perspective, a "foreordained" companion).  when it gets serious and you're deciding if you should get married to the person, than bring your decision to the lord through prayer.  why people want to jump the gun and make dating such an intense process approaching that of an extreme sport is why dating at BYU sucks. 

education...i'm confused

in trying to decide what i need to be taking, as far as future classes go, i have to say that the decisions are confusing.  i know all the classes that i'm suppose to take but how i want to organize them, how many each semester, and which ones first is getting hard to decide.  i wish i could just be a genius and have this all over with.

are you like me?

have you ever been frustrated with yourself for not putting your best foot forward, or for giving a half-assed effort in something?  perhaps some of you are thinking about your hometeaching record (i know my ward is), or perhaps your looking at your grades for this semester and can answer in the affirmative.  i know that one of my roommates will probably feel that way when he gets his report card (do we even get report cards???).  well, regardless, i know that in my biology 120 class, which by the way is not a hard class, i didn't put forth the effort needed to get an A when it probably would have been easy.  instead i'm going to walk away with a B.  now i know that a B isn't horrible, but it's not the B that i'm frustrated with-  it's the effort i put towards the class.  i didn't learn a thing in the class and it's because i didn't want to and i didn't realize that it was so important until now.  so for all of you that read this.....(consisting of bryce and ollie, which means that i'm preaching to the choir), DON'T SELL YOURSELF SHORT IN ANYTHING! i'm now going to have to work even harder if i want to get into a medical school because a B isn't going to cut it when it comes to my science GPA.  

Daily Universe Editorials

So BYU has this newspaper, much like other universities, called the daily universe.  it includes everything from world news, local utah news, to what's going on at BYU. every once in a while i like to pick up a free copy of the newspaper and look through it to see if there are any interesting articles and also to read the police beat which is my absolute favorite. i just die laughing at what the police have to respond to here at BYU. sometimes  i wish BYU had some more police action to write about because they only put it in the newspaper about once a week and it's hilarious.  today as i was reading through the editorials, which i have started reading more frequently lately, i realized that only really stupid people write into the editorial column.  the only thing you can find in there are complains of  people who are either writing about how the honor code is really stupid, how skateboarders are retarded, why the bathrooms are full of sh**, or really self-righteous people making an argument in return to a previous article.  i suppose my blog is somewhat hypocritical because i'm now complaining about the complainers.  does BYU not assign enough homework that some people are so bored that they have to write in about how the urinal pissed back at them and got urine all over their pants, or how girls are wearing shorts that are too short for their all too sensitive eyes.  give me a break.  if that's the best that BYU students have to write about, there is obviously not enough going on around here. 

i can finally breathe, suddenly alive

right now i'm sitting the front living room of my apartment listening to a song that keeps saying "i can finally breathe, suddenly alive"  and i'm loving ever bit of the song.  it's from a new anberlin album that i bought this week.  Bryce, Mitch and i have all decided to get tickets to the anberlin concert that's coming up in about a month or two.  i'm supper exited because they are my favorite band of all time.  

yesterday, which was friday night, i didn't have anything going on here in provo and it had been about 6 weeks since i had made it home last time so i decided to pay my family a visit.  when i got there my dad started putting me to work as he seems to have a difficult time getting anyone else in the family to work.  but after washing cars and going to home depo and some other stuff we ate dinner and we got a chance to goof off.  we played "imagine if" and then my mom started playing the piano.  luckily in my family, all of us are musically talented and we just started singing different parts to the songs that she was playing. we were singing to songs from musicals, disney movies, and special arrangement of hymns. having a little family time this weekend made me realize how much i really love them and miss spending as much time with them as i used to.  i'm not homesick at all, i'm just realizing how cool my family is.

also tonight, being saturday, we decided to have a guys only night here at the apartment.  it ended up not being guys only as a certain girl named jenny invited herself over to hang out with us.  now normally i dont care if she comes and hangs out, and i wouldn't have even cared if she came tonight.  what i didn't like is the fact that she asked if it was a guys night out and i told her "yes!" and also that our apartment wanted to just hang out together.  even after telling her that she stuck around.  now, i dont want this to sound like i dont like her, as i said before, i typically don't care if she's here.  either way, we decided to play risk and she took over allen's spot in the game.  i think she wanted to leave so she committed suicide pretty quickly.  during the game i thought that Bryce was going to kill us all, and several times i thought that i was going to be eliminated but i ended up surviving until it was just Wally and me but that ended very quickly.  Wally beat us all up pretty good at the end.  well tomorrow morning i'm getting up early (6 am) like i do every sunday for BYU EMS, so i'm headed to bed. 

Dinner for 4

last night bryce and i made dinner for Sam Strong and Alicia John, two girls in our ward.  bryce, my roommate, has been watching this totally 90's show called "my so-called life" for the last two months. every once in a while i'll watch an episode with him and whoever else is watching it with him, typically Sam.  surprisingly it's a really good show and unlike anything that's on tv now.  lately Alicia, Sam's roommate has been coming over to watch the show with us, which has only been an addition to the pleasantness that already saturates the room.  well, as the shows began to wind down in the only season, bryce came up with the idea inviting them over to watch the last episode and make them dinner.  when they came over bryce and i instantly began interrogating Alicia about the date she had with Jon Write the night before.  after making the dinner together we ate and talked about TRT 2009.  Bryce and i invited Alicia and Sam to come with us to California and take a cruise with us.  we haven't figured out all the details for he vacation but we're thinking about hanging out in southern cali for a few days and taking a short cruise to mexico.  we'll see what actually happens... last year we had planned on going to New York City but because of gas prices, we changed plans and went to portland and then down the coast to san diego.  i think it's going to be even better than the trip we had last year, and the trip last year was amazing.  after inviting them to go on the trip with us, and eating dinner, we showed them the movie from TRT 2008 (which is a great movie and my first ever), in order to entice them to go on the trip with us.  it was a great night.

ok, so i guess i'm starting a blog... in all honesty, i'm not really sure why i'm doing it, but i guess if i had to put a reason to it, i would say that i guess it's a good way to write things outside a journal, but less public than facebook (which i'm beginning to dislike more and more). i imagine that anyone who reads this blog will already know me but hell, this is my blog and i can write about myself all i want cause it's mine. do i really want to start with all the boring stuff? the "get to know you stuff." the kind of things where i say that i go to BYU and that i'm a premed a student, and that my dogs name is this and that....? no. i've titles this blog "Undivided Honesty" because that's exactly how i want to write things, in brutal honesty. so here we go. seeing as though this is my first entry, i'm going to make this very short and to the point. right now in my life i suppose i'm in a a phase of limbo. doesn't it always seem that life is always in a changing phase or that it always needs to be? well, that's how i feel and what my life is like right now. just within the last two or three weeks i've decided not to go to paramedic school as i had originally planned. so after deciding not to go to paramedic school as i had been planning for months, i thought to myself, "well that's ok, i'll just continue to go to school at BYU and finish up on my bachelors degree on my way to PA (physician assistant) school. then, about 3-4 days ago, i was walking home from class, listing to some good music on my ipod touch when it hit me. i've only decided to go to medical school because i want to be a slacker through college and get ok grades when i could be getting great grades and go to medical school where my real passion lies. i thought about it and realized that my plan to go to PA school, while still a good goal and perhaps a great backup plan, was selling myself short of what my full potential is. i know that a lot of people want to go to PA school, and i'm not saying that PAs are inferior to doctors, it's just not using the gifts that God has given me to their full strength. now that i've realized what i want and i feel like for the first time i have the self-discipline and determination to reach the goal, i'm looking back on two classes that i took that i should have gotten better grades in. one being chem 105 which i got a C+ in. wow, blake, a C+ is horrible and i didn't try in that class, i never read and i never studied to the extent that i should have. the other class is one that i'm in right now, PDBio 120. this is only a 2 credit class and i've just blown it off like it's nothing. i'm an idiot. i dont know what i'm going to get in this class but i dont think i'm going to be happy with it. i still have some time to make up for being an idiot, but i dont know how much i can really fix in the month that we have before the semester ends. i hope that i can pull something else off. ok, now that i'm being completely honest in my blog let me throw out a few disclaimers. first off, i am a horrible speller and i almost never read through my work after i've written it to catch my spelling or grammatical errors, so if you find some, keep it to yourself. another thing is that although i'm writing about myself and posting it on the internet where everyone can read it, i'm not so sure that i want anyone to. i mean, lets be honest here... everyone wants others to understand them and have empathy towards their situations, but no one wants to ask for that because it makes them sound vulnerable and egotistical, but guess what, everyone who is reading this knows exactly what i'm referring to. um.... if i think of any other disclaimers, i'll post them up. i'm sure i'll have to embarrass myself a couple of times before i get it all figured out. ok, i'm really tired so i'm calling it quits. i'll finish my blog some other day.